texmurphyfandomcom-20200213-history
The Pandora Directive
Background Like all Tex Murphy games, The Pandora Directive takes place in post-World War III San Francisco in April 2043. After the devastating events of WWIII, many major cities have been rebuilt (as is the case with New San Francisco), though certain areas still remain as they were before the war (as in Old San Francisco). WWIII also left another mark on the world: the formation of two classes of citizens. Specifically, the Mutants and the Norms. After the events of Under a Killing Moon, tensions between the two groups have begun to diminish. The end to the Crusade for Genetic Purity was a turning point in the relations between Mutants and "Norms". Tex still lives on Chandler Ave., which recently underwent a city-funded cleanup. The events of WWIII still left the planet with no ozone layer, and to protect their citizens many countries adopted a time reversal. Instead of sleeping at night, and being awake in the day, humans have become nocturnal, in a manner of speaking. Though Tex lives in what is considered a Mutant area of town, he himself is a "Norm". ]] In The Pandora Directive, Tex Murphy (Chris Jones) is hired by Gordon Fitzpatrick (Kevin McCarthy) to find his friend, Thomas Malloy (John Agar). Tex quickly discovers that Fitzpatrick is not the only one who is looking for Malloy and finds himself dragged into a dangerous situation. With few he can trust, Tex must try and unravel the mystery surrounding Malloy, and along the way he'll learn the devastating truth behind the greatest government conspiracy of all time. The game has a large cast of characters ranging from the deranged to deadly. Several well-known actors starred, including Barry Corbin and Tanya Roberts. Plot Summary After being hired by Fitzpatrick to search for Malloy,who seeks Tex's help after one of his leads to his friend, Sandra Collins a college lab researcher who was working with Malloy ends up dead .Tex arranges to meet Chelsee Bando for dinner at her place but after investigating Malloys room at The Ritz he is knocked unconscious and left with a letter in Mayan and a pawn receipt,some photos,a scarf and a book about the "Airport of the Gods".His investigations about the scarf lead him to Emily at the Fuschia Flamingo Malloy's who has been stalked.After investigating Gary Wrights cabin Ted finds his dead body and a projector playing an autopsy of an alien and a CD.To get to Emily Tex asks Chelsee to the Fuschia Flamingo where he talks to Emily after Chelsee catches him eyeing up the dancer.Emily reveals she has been stalked by the notorious "Black Arrow Killer".The next day after getting a book to help translating the letter fro he meets Crazy Gary in an alleyway and after giving him some scotch he gets a key to a warehouse belonging to Malloy wherein he finds a tapestry,a photo of the Plains of Nazca and a map of Asia amongst other items.Tex is led to investigate reporter Lucia Pernell by both Louie and Rook who explains to Murphy that the real Black Arrow Killer was caught in Arizona and apparently killed himself in jail after being visited by two NSA agents.Also it is rev his confession was covered up by the NSA to the media.This was before the recent murder of Sandra Collins with the same mondus opernadi. On his way home he sees a man in black on Rusty's Funhouse roof.After making his way there he finds a link to AUTOTEC a company where Sandra worked and someone called DH.After getting a security card to the company from Sandras house he heads to to AUTOTEC to find out the identity and face of Dag Horton who is revealed to be the new Black Arrow Killer after you find a locket belonging to Sandra and pictures of her and Emily.Tex also finds that Reverned Gary is also linked to him.upon fetching Gary some scotch you learn that not only has he been paid to keep an eye out for packages sent to the Fuschia Flamingo for Horton who he tells Murphy that he may be on the roof of Rusty's Funhouse where he spies Horton attacking Emily.Depending on your actions Tex will either save Emily or she will die.After chasing Horton around the rooftops you corner him atop Rusty's Funhouse and during the scuffle Horton drops to his death and drops a tracking device.After being left out the hands of the police by a brunette women Tex finds out that Chelsee has left for Arizona to find herself. The tracking device leads him to a large metal puzzle box next to a mine he deactivates. Returning to the Fuschia Flamingo Tex talks to Emily(provided he has saved her) and she reveals she discarded the brown envelope that Malloy sent the box to her was in.After returning to his apartment with the wrapper he is confronted by Jackson Cross an NSA agent who reveals that Dag Horton a fellow agent was allegedly posing as the Black Arrow Killer to clamp down on drugs trafficking in the Fuschia Flamingo.Tex lets him in on what he knows with regards to Emily and the box which is then taken into the AUTOTEC HQ.After being dropped off at his office Tex is meets the Brunette woman Reagan Madsen (Tanya Roberts) who reveals herself to be Malloys daughter and that she too is in possesion of a puzzle box and that are others floating around and that they have items worth a large fortune.She leaves after giving him her phone number.Using the data on the envelope wrapper leads Tex to Gardon House apartments where Malloy is staying,Here he finds a CD, an anagram book from the Lucia Pernells newspaper and Cosmic Connection magazine.After attempting to access the CD at his office Tex heads back to the Garden House where he finds that Malloy has headed to the Waterfront Warehouse.Here Tex meets Malloy who reveals that he and Fitzpatrick worked in Roswell in the 1980's examining the wreckage and technology from the alien spacecraft craft that crashed there.These include examining both hieroglyphics and antihydrogen particles which the government used as weapons in WWIII resulting in the contamination and damage to the biosphere.At the end of their conversation two NSA agents appear and accidently kill Malloy and Tex sets fire to flammeable barrels of gasoline to escape. Fitzpatrick meets up with Tex who informs him of Malloys death.Tex presses Fitzpatrick about the work done at Roswell and after WWIII in China.It is revealed that Malloy was deciphering the hieroglyphs on the wreckage but was unable to translate one of them: a black sun.Furthermore it is revealed that he deciphered that a second ship had arrived on Earth.Both of these were common motifs on the hieroglyphs .Fitzpatrick fearing that the government intends on finding the ship in order to secure the technology also reveals that not only he has a box himself but that Tex should also retrieve the one he lost so they can continue.Tex admits he is more likely to trust Fitzpatrick than Meaden.A fax from Lucia confirms that Doug Horten was the copycat killer and an NSA agent.Back at the Waterfront Warehouse Tex finds notes from Malloy about Item 186 and that he sent out exactly five boxes to his friends and family.Furthermore in a safe he finds a diagram relating to a containment chamber as well as key for his closet in Garden House.This leads to a book called “Messages From Outer Space” by JI Thelwitt with attempts at an anagram inside,a photo of The Gate To the Sun as well as a notebook in a briefcase. Tex meets Reagan at the Imperial hotel where he breaks the bad news to her after she details her childhood and then hands over the box while he gives her the notebook. She deciphers the notebook to the initials OE EW AE the next day and she and Tex debate what to do with the information and the contents of the boxes.Tex then contacts Lucia who asks to find files on the NSA Project Euphoria.In return she gets the creators of anagrams in the newspaper to find out all possible arrangements of the book title “Messages From Outer Space” .Using the tapestry he found earlier on Reagans box is opened containing an artefact. Officer Mac Maiden leads Tex to the coroners room to examine the body of Dag Horten where he steals his wallet and ID Card.Using this he enters AUTOTECH and retrieves the Euphoria Files,Emilys box and some cash and then leaves the building to cash in the receipt from Malloys room at the Ritz to get the Black Dagger.After opening the box after solving the puzzle to find a module and a slide.After ringing Fitzpatrick realizes that the initials from the notebook refer to Archie Ellis editor of the Cosmic Connection who is contacted by Tex.A distorted image and voice awaits Murphy who is asked about the author of There are Messages from Space ,the alien landing strips at Mexico and the structure at Tia Wanu(JI Thelwitt,Plains of Nazca and Gate of the Sun). He is then led to Archie Ellis an expert in UFO’s and writer for the Cosmic Connection who had met with Malloy and recorded an interview with Malloy who had revealed that a device called the Pandora Device was opened in Roswell and the entity inside killed off everyone there.Archie also reveals that he was given a box too but it was stolen .After talking to Fitzpatrick Tex is given the co-ordinates to Rosewell and reveals that the box sent to Archie was possibly a fake as a diversion for the NSA.Reagan calls and teases Tex with the proposition for sex.On his way to Roswell Tex realises that Archie might be in danger from the NSA due to seeing a black speeder outside his place.If the player returns to Archie and warns him of his suspicions Archie leaves town for a while(otherwise he will be killed by Jackson Cross).After finding his way into the complex Tex is knocked out by gas and finds a video left by an officer detailing that some gaseous entity has been released and has killed everyone else and must be put back in the containment field before it kills him.After succeeding in trapping the alien he gets access to the level 2 rooms of the complex.Collecting classified documents and pictures he uses a toy spaceship to navigate the air vents to collect more items including a keycard to level 3.Once there he finds the wreckage of the spaceship and eventually the power cell #186.With that in hand Murphy then leaves Roswell for his office.The next day Chelsee calls to inform Tex she will return to San Fransisco and receives the anagram results from Lucia and deduces that “Merge the Four Cases To See Maps” as the result which is the password for the CD from the Garden House and discovers that the final box has been sent to Elijah Witt whom Tex contacts using a tracer to get his address.Witt agrees to meet Tex at the Imperial Lounge but Tex uses this as a means to infiltrate Witt’s apartment in Vancouver British Columbia.After deactivating the alarm Tex recovers and opens Witts box and heads back to the Garden House to open the last of the metal boxes.After combining all pieces of the Pandora Device Tex brings together Fitzpatrick,Reagan and Elijah and is given the power source to the device. A hologram of Malloy reveals that he was able to decipher the hieroglyphics confirming the existence of a secondary “colonizing ship” with the possibility of holding more antihydrogen particles(the black sun symbol) .Furthermore it is revealed via a map that the ship is located in the Yucatan Peninsula.Reagan joins Tex and Fitzpatrick who all take separate routes to the ships locations the next day.That night Reagan attempts to seduce Tex at his apartment and his decision whether to sleep with her affects the ending.The next day Tex arrives at a Mayan temple ruins which he navigates a series of traps and puzzles before landing in a chamber with Reagan and debate the fate of the technology.They both break apart a statue to activate a stone elevator to escape to find themselves outside the spaceship.Reagan attempts to goad Tex into selling the technology for money to escape his life of drudgery when Jackson Cross appears and reveals that he and Reagan have been working together all along.He explains that he originally wanted to kill off Murphy but once he was convinced by Reagan allowed Tex to collect the boxes for him and that she could bring him to their side.Fitzpatrick then appears and promises to give them the ship.Depending on the players actions throughout the game there are nine possible endings that are divided into Mission Street,Lombard Street and Boulavard Of Broken Dreams. Mission Street: Date with Chelse Everyone boards the ship.Fitzpatrick traps Reagan and Jackson Cross in the Power Cell Room, but not before Cross fatally wounds Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick urges Tex to activate the antihydrogen bomb inside and reveals to Tex that he will be able to fly the ship away from earth as he can control it as he reveals that his father was in fact one of the aliens who impregnated his mother.Tex sets the bomb off with a button denoted by the black sun, and leaves the ship before it takes off.The dinner at Chelsee's place finally comes to pass, and she rewards Tex with asomewhat unorthodox striptease. To get this you did all the right things with Chelsee(take her offer to dinner at her house,apoligise and show the bump on yur body after being knocked etc., and fought off Regans attempts to seduce you . You also managed to keep on the right side of most of the Chandler St. denizens ie saving Emily and Archie. Mission Street: Holodate The same events occur but Chelsee reveals that she isn’t readyto take their relationship to the next level and reveals that she is going on a date with a Clark Gable hologram and suggests Tex do the same.He does the same with Jayne Mansfield and Anna Nicole Smith holograms.He comments that things could be worse off. To get this you must do all the right things with Chelsee like before and fought off Reagans attempts to seduce you but did not keep on the right side of the denizens of Chandler St. ie allowed Emily to die. Gameplay The Pandora Directive is the second game to make use of Under a Killing Moon's engine, and featured real-time 3D graphics. Players explore environments from a first-person perspective and can click to examine objects or interact using a variety of verbs. In addition to verb interaction, players can gather, use, and combine items to solve a variety of puzzles, and must also solve self-contained logic puzzles. Character interaction consists of two primary modes: asking characters about a universal list of topics available to the player, and branching dialog trees. These dialog trees were unusual at the time in that they did not display Tex's full response, but rather a short and sometimes humorous description, a convention later popularized by Bioware. The Pandora Directive was one of the first adventure games to feature branching narratives and multiple endings. The player could take Tex down "Mission Street" where he takes the high road and wins the love of his long time crush, Chelsee Bando. Mission Street has three possible endings. Down "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", Tex is a selfish and cynical jerk worrying only about the big payoff. Boulevard of Broken Dreams leads to four possible endings. If the player chooses neither path, Tex will go down "Lombard Street". On this path, he's not really a nice guy, but he's not mean either. Lombard Street leads to two possible endings, both of which are common to Mission Street. The "best" Mission Street ending is achieved when the player has taken the high road every time he was given the choice, and by exactly following two conversation paths earlier in the game. The Pandora Directive provided two difficulty settings, Entertainment and Game Players mode. On Entertainment, hints were available and the player could bypass certain puzzles if the player so chose. Some minor objects and video scenes were available on this setting that were not available on Game Players mode. A total of 1500 points were available on Entertainment mode. On Game Players mode, no hints were available and puzzles could not be bypassed. Bonus points were available to those who solved certain puzzles in an allotted time or within a certain number of moves. In addition to this, extra in game locations and puzzles were available on Game Players mode that weren't available on Entertainment mode, making for a more challenging game playing experience. A total of 4000 points were available on Game Players mode. Trivia *David Wright is also the name of one of the Artists working on the game. *Emily Sue Patterson sings the original song 'Body and Soul'. *Beside the fireplace in David Wright's cabin where the painting falls. There are the initials BA. These are the initials of Beau Anderson, one of the VR designers. *Tex's guitar is signed by Richie Havens. *The Surgeon General's warning says: "When you smoke you suck" and there is a little sign underneath which says Larsen. Nathan Larsen is one of the Art Director's of the Pandora Directive. Pop culture references *At the beginning of the game, the Black Arrow Killer throws a copy of Under a Killing Moon off Sandra Collins' shelf. *In the Fuchsia Flamingo, there is game box of Amazon. *Company names are parodied: Sony = Sany, Camel cigarettes = Llama cigarettes. Llama advertisement also has a rhyme written beside (Hey kids,/Don't Let Llama Clause down,/start smoking his cigs/before he hits town!) *If you look at the painting at the bottom of the stairwell in the Ritz Hotel, Tex will mention Sam and Max, the characters from a LucasArts adventure game and animated television series. *If you look at the orange painting on the wall in Tex's office (to the right of the front door) Tex says, "This alien landscape reminds me of the Old Star Trek episode where they get that distress call, then Captain Kirk meets that beautiful woman, then he and Spock barely escape, then Kirk makes that funny joke right at the end." (which sums up the formula of most Star Trek TOS episodes) *In the lobby of Autotech, there is a magazine with a picture of the Under a Killing Moon box on the front cover. *The alley behind Rook's Pawnshop is marked with spray can. One mark on the left say "No Key" (where Tex found a key in the previous game). The one on the right says "Choco Man" (where Tex found Clint in a dumpster). *At the morgue, Tex can find Pug's head in a jar, having been decapitated by the Chameleon, and his head stuffed in Tex's water cooler. *In the article "Movies and Shakers" from the newspaper from Rook's trashcan it mentions a 91-year-old Bruce Willis working on Die Hard XVII: Still Alive and Kicking in which there is a terrorist plot to take over a Fort Lauderdale retirement community. Also in this article it says that the 1995 film "Waterworld" starring Kevin Costner finally broke even. *In the Electronics Shop there are "Geordi LaForge visors" named after a main character from Star Trek: The Next Generation. *In Storage Room 102 at Roswell there is something that resembles a bowling ball on the shelf which reminds Tex of a Fred Flintstone's bowling ball. *In the Metallurgy Lab at Roswell (accessed via the ventilation shaft) there is a tank in one corner of the room about which Tex says, "I haven't seen tanks like this before, except on Seaquest." *In the Miscellaneous Storage room of the third level of Roswell, there is an object sitting on top of the crate with the striker about which Tex says, "Looks like a leg fell off an Imperial Walker." *When Tex calls Archie Ellis, there is a possible response called "Hobbit Humor". When you select this Tex says "I am Gandalf, Wielder of the Glamdring and Slayer of the Balrog." the left is a shot of Gandalf facing the Balrog in the movie adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring. Category:Games Category:Pandora Directive External links * The Pandora Directive at GOG * The Pandora Directive at Steam